Rome to Florence

February 27, 2009
ROME
Well Heather came today from Sweden. We are heading off on our trip to Florence tomorrow!! I am very excited!! Today we went to the Pantheon and to Piazza Navona. Heather doesn’t really know what to see so we just walked. Heather does seem VERY excited to be here. She kept saying “can you believe we are in Italy?!?!” She didn’t even know what the Pantheon was!! It seems so strange to me but I suppose some people don’t travel the same way as me. I think she likes to meet people when she travels whereas I think it’s more important to see the monuments and museums. I don’t think this will be a problem though. Tonight we went to the Colisseum to see it all lit up at nighttime. Of course, we couldn’t just sit there and look. We thought the experience would be much enhanced by a couple bottles of wine. Haha so we bought some cheap wine at the supermarket; you must understand though that cheap wine in Italy (€1) is still rather decent wine. We also bought little plastic containers (with lids- brilliant) so as to not look like heathens drinking out of the bottle. So we planted ourselves and just reveled in our situation. It was a good day. Oh and I’m doing this new thing where I select one thing everyday to be the Emblem of the Day (thanks granddad) so that I can remember the day in the future.

Emblem of the Day
The feeling I got sitting next to this 1900 year old structure;
like I was part of something bigger.

February 28, 2009
ROME TO FLORENCE
Today Heather and I got on a train at 10:30 to Firenze Centrale. The Italian countryside was gorgeous in the sunshine. Seeing the rows and rows of olive trees was beautiful. They have this silver shimmer to them that really adds to their majesty. It was cool to see the old ruins of stone houses from god-only-knows how long ago. We arrived and hoped we were going in the right direction to find our hostel. It seems that in Italy they don’t want to have 3 digit addresses so instead they change the street name after 99 addresses. This is rather irritating when trying to find a location; we walked down a straight street and it had three different names in three different sections.
We eventually got to our hostel; I was rather relieved after carrying my 90 litre backpack so far- I know I need to learn to pack light. It is a huge hostel. We are staying here on the recommendation of a couple friends and it’s great! It has a pool, gym area, sauna, free wifi (yay iphone!), bar and restaurant. So the first thing I did was jump in the pool for a quick dip before we headed out to see Florence. It is a small city so its easy to walk around everywhere. We headed to the Duomo (no big deal) and had calzone on the steps. We wandered from there to the Piazza di Santa Croce and basked on the church steps in the sun for a bit before setting out to find a wine store. We got our wine and then headed to the Arno river to find the Ponte Vecchio (old Bridge). This was the only bridge that was not wiped out by the strategic bombing of WWII. We sought out our spot to watch the sunset (as suggested by a family friend, Nicoletta;) Heather, coming from the snowy Sweden was loving the sunshine. So we were sitting for about 10 minutes before we were approached by a couple of Florentine men. They were full of love for Canadian girls apparently. We are pretty sure they just go out prowling in the tourist areas for girls haha. Anyways, we chatted with them while sitting on the river’s wall. Like I said before Heather likes to meet the people when she travels so we agreed to meet them later outside our hostel. We both wanted to be as cheap as possible on the trip so for dinner we had day-old buns with uncooked hotdogs and slabs of cheese haha. It actually wasn’t that bad!
After ‘dinner’ we debated whether to meet these guys that we realized were a little boring. We felt bad standing them up so we met them but said we didn’t have long. They took us to see some live jazz music in a university area. Unfortunately the band wasn’t playing yet and wouldn’t be for a bit so we left and went to an Irish bar which was DEAD. So we began to head home, the guys didn’t seem to happy about that but walked us back to our hostel anyways. We said our goodbyes- these guys were a little TOO Italian for my liking.
Heather and I went down to the hostel bar which was also pretty dead. BUT I met a guy who is from Chicago, goes to Dartmouth, is finishing up an exchange in Copenhagen and (the best part) IS A BRONCOS FAN!!! Who knew they had Broncos fans in Europe?!?! So if you know me at all I was THRILLED!! We immediately started talking about quarterbacks, running backs and safeties. He believes that Cutler will pull through like me. That was probably the best part of the night for me (second to the sunset on the Ponte Vecchio) haha. Shortly after meeting this delightful American Heather and I headed up to our room to bed.
EMBLEM OF THE DAY
Watching the sunset on the Ponte Vecchio while drinking Italian Prosecco… Heaven.